tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-142415392018-12-19T11:54:26.958+02:00Asking the Wrong QuestionsAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comBlogger965125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-79863059887440868362018-11-26T20:15:00.005+02:002018-11-26T20:16:20.591+02:00A Political History of the Future: State Tectonics by Malka Older, at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column is up at Lawyers, Guns & Money, discussing State Tectonics, the concluding volume of Malka Older's Centennal Cycle. As I wrote in my review of the first volume in the sequences, Infomocracy, these are not terribly exciting books in terms of plot, but they make up for that with the breadth and richness of their worldbuilding, and more than that, byAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-22128428229191306662018-11-19T23:44:00.003+02:002018-11-19T23:44:30.860+02:00Review: The Breath of the Sun by Rachel Fellman, at Strange HorizonsToday at Strange Horizons I review Rachel Fellman's The Breath of the Sun, a remarkably assured debut that challenged me to fully capture it. As I write in my opening paragraph, it's a novel that invites comparisons, but is also very much its own thing:
There are any number of neat, one-sentence ways to sum up Rachel Fellman's The Breath of the Sun. You could describe it as a cross between SofiaAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-83383349648927337812018-11-15T18:15:00.000+02:002018-11-15T18:15:38.316+02:00Recent Movie Roundup 31In one of this year's previous movie roundups, I noted what a terrible year 2018 has turned out to be for blockbuster, action-adventure entertainment. That situation hasn't improved (and seems unlikely to by the end of the year) but as the seasons change and the more sophisticated segment of the year's movie slate starts showing up in theaters, I've found myself pleasantly surprised. 2018's Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-82128437603748167832018-11-11T18:59:00.003+02:002018-11-11T18:59:59.660+02:00Streaming in the FallA few weeks ago I noted that this year's fall network TV crop has been singularly unimpressive, so much so that I didn't even bother to review any of them. At this point, there aren't any new shows that I'm following (I briefly hate-watched A Million Little Things, a This Is Us clone about suicide and depression that is just as risible as that description suggests; but life is too short to Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-37930205091178536402018-11-05T21:22:00.001+02:002018-11-05T21:22:20.518+02:00Sorry to Bother YouIf you're anything like me, you've probably been hearing great things about Sorry to Bother You since it premiered to rapturous reception in this year's Sundance Festival. If you're a lot like me, you probably follow many film industry people and reviewers on twitter, and have spent several months watching them go nuts over this film, while also advising you to learn as little as possible about Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-59149560629040243722018-10-31T11:50:00.000+02:002018-10-31T11:50:55.629+02:00Review: The Haunting of Hill House at Strange HorizonsMy review of Netflix's miniseries adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is up at Strange Horizons today. I ended up feeling deeply conflicted about the show. Like many Jackson fans, I was initially dismayed by its decision to rip out the original novel's story and replace it with something in which only a few character names and details are recognizable. Then I was won Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-14522607765504253202018-10-24T15:11:00.002+03:002018-10-24T15:12:27.176+03:00First Man[A version of this post appeared yesterday at Lawyers, Guns & Money]
So, here's something you may not know about me: I love stories about solar system space exploration. I love fictionalizations of the mid-century space race like Apollo 13 and the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. I love hokey disaster movies in space like Gravity and The Martian. I have even voluntary sat down and watched Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-62211124705384228652018-09-30T18:33:00.000+03:002018-09-30T18:33:04.529+03:00Thoughts on the New TV Season, 2018 EditionUsually when I write these roundups, it's to review the new network shows that premiere in the fall. But as we all know, there hasn't been a season for TV for some time now, as evidenced by the fact that the various streaming services delivered several new, high-profile projects in September, just when you'd expect everyone's focus to be on the networks. I might still write about the network Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-70660430746894663792018-09-29T00:35:00.001+03:002018-09-29T00:36:19.701+03:00A Political History of the Future: Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column discusses Revenant Gun, the final volume in Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy. More broadly, it talks about the way the entire trilogy constructs its world, and how the central metaphor of a space empire that powers its technologies, its weapons, and its internal policing apparatus by enforcing a particular calendar gives Lee a rich and Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-67124246711373917112018-09-13T18:09:00.000+03:002018-09-13T18:09:54.528+03:00Recent Reading Roundup 48The theme of this recent reading roundup is awards lists. Specifically, mainstream literary award shortlists like the Booker and the Women's Prize. That's not an area of literature I tend to frequent, since the books nominated for those awards often strike me as flat and narrowly-focused. But there are certainly enough exceptions to make these awards worth the occasional look--this year's Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-17798925944541177152018-09-09T18:02:00.000+03:002018-09-09T18:02:06.172+03:00A Political History of the Future: Humans at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column is up at Lawyers, Guns & Money. This time, the topic is Humans, the Channel 4/AMC series which recently concluded its third season, about a world in which human-seeming robots have taken over most jobs in the service economy, and begin to develop consciousness.
One core difference between Humans and a lot of other science fiction shows about Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-90349534766372583942018-08-31T18:47:00.000+03:002018-08-31T18:47:35.664+03:00Getting Out: The Dangerous Weirdness of Atlanta's Second SeasonI wanted to write something about the first season of Atlanta, Donald Glover’s groundbreaking dramedy about a young black man trying to make it big by managing his cousin's rap career, but I couldn't figure out what. You know that feeling when something is brilliant, and rich, and clearly begging to be discussed, but you can't figure out your angle of entry? In particular, I wanted a conversationAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-58060776924610843992018-08-30T16:24:00.000+03:002018-08-30T16:24:36.161+03:00MeanwhileThings have been a little quiet here at AtWQ, mainly because I spent half of August on vacation. This doesn't mean I haven't been writing, though--I published several shorter, more conversational pieces at Lawyers, Guns and Money while I was traveling, and during the last week as I was reacclimating to normal life (including recovering from a minor, vacation-related injury). For good order's Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-66237150251205836882018-08-01T21:18:00.000+03:002018-08-01T21:18:19.434+03:00Recent Reading Roundup 47I'm sorry to report it, but I'm not having the best reading year in 2018. I'm reading a lot, and enjoying quite a bit of what I'm reading, but when I look at my lists from the year's first half, very little stands out as something that I'll still be thinking of, much less selecting for a best-of list, at the year's end. I'd like to say that this current bunch of books represents a turning Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-72051767386877820142018-07-15T20:16:00.001+03:002018-07-15T20:20:13.291+03:00Recent Movie Roundup 30I think it was in one of last year's recent movie roundups that I noted that while everything in the world seemed to be terrible, at least the movies were good. On the level of popcorn entertainment, if on no other, 2017 was a genuinely great year, delivering instant classics like Get Out, impeccable crowdpleasers like Wonder Woman, and slightly off-the-wall experiments like Spider-Man: Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-80985540667791632922018-07-09T18:42:00.003+03:002018-07-09T18:43:04.128+03:00A Political History of the Future: Tacoma at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column discusses Tacoma, the follow-up to Fullbright's paradigm-busting exploration game Gone Home (see my review here). Tacoma takes a very different approach from Gone Home's 90s-set domestic drama. It puts us in the head of Amy, a salvage specialist in 2088 dispatched to the titular space station, to discover what catastrophe caused the crew to Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-48353890659525230442018-07-02T21:01:00.000+03:002018-07-02T21:01:28.159+03:00Five Comments on Luke Cage, Season 2I don't have that much to say about the second season of Luke Cage. Which is actually a shame, because despite some problems, I'd say that it's the strongest and most consistently entertaining season of television the Netflix MCU has produced since the first season of Jessica Jones. It's just that the things I'd have to say about it are basically a combination of my review of the first season, Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-43094154274506012832018-06-27T18:06:00.000+03:002018-06-27T18:08:17.017+03:00Get to the Next Screen: Thoughts on Westworld's Second SeasonWhen I wrote about Westworld's first season eighteen months ago, it was with profound annoyance at the show's reliance on twists and revelations, to the detriment of some of the interesting ideas about personhood and consciousness that the season tooled around with but never really explored. I wasn't alone in making this criticism, and creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have subsequently Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-51400138580186097222018-06-24T18:45:00.000+03:002018-06-24T18:45:42.788+03:00The Shows of Summer, 2018 EditionSummer is properly here, and with it all the TV shows deemed too weird or too niche to make it in more prestigious weather. I admit that I've noped out of several shows whose flimsiness felt appropriate to the season but not really to my taste, like the virtual reality procedural Reverie or the Castle-in-reverse detective show Take Two. And on the other hand, some more serious fare, like FX's Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-10142400711581369532018-06-10T20:24:00.001+03:002018-06-10T20:27:15.927+03:00A Political History of the Future: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column discusses Catherynne M. Valente's new novel Space Opera. As I discuss in the essay, this is seemingly an odd choice--Valente's Hitchhiker's Guide-inspired comedy about a galaxy where species prove their right to exist among civilized nations by competing in space-Eurovision is pretty far outside the boundaries I had previously defined, of works Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-65222816769292814232018-06-05T12:15:00.001+03:002018-06-05T12:15:42.481+03:00Review: Lost in Space, Season 1 at Strange HorizonsThis week at Strange Horizons, I review the first season of Netflix's re-reboot of Lost in Space. Like a lot of people I found the entire notion of remaking a silly little space-pioneering show from 1965 (after a failed reboot movie in 1998) rather bizarre, and I can't say that the show has proved that this was something that needed to happen. What it does achieve, however, is to demonstrate Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-86240749545177980322018-05-10T18:11:00.000+03:002018-05-10T18:11:42.346+03:00Infinity LinksSomewhat surprisingly for a film that has so little time (and possibly also inclination) to explore any interesting ideas raised by its premise, Infinity War has resulted in a rather vibrant conversation. I'll say from the outset that most of the links I've collected proceed from the point of view that the film is at the very least flawed, if not genuinely bad. This is probably my selection Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-81260509684769292602018-05-07T21:43:00.004+03:002018-05-07T21:43:47.185+03:00Review: Paris Adrift by E.J. Swift at Strange HorizonsMy latest Strange Horizons review looks at E.J. Swift's time travel novel Paris Adrift. I've been hearing Swift's name spoken with admiration for several years now, as more and more readers I trust became absorbed by her Osiris Project trilogy (Osiris, 2012; Cataveiro, 2014; Tamaruq, 2015). As a standalone, Paris Adrift seemed like a perfect opportunity to hop on, but unfortunately what I foundAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-1769943520760412722018-05-06T20:11:00.000+03:002018-05-06T20:31:41.027+03:00A Political History of the Future: The City & The City at Lawyers, Guns & MoneyMy latest Political History of the Future column takes the opportunity of the BBC having released a miniseries adaptation of it to discuss China Miéville's The City & The City, a novel about two cities that exist side-by-side but have erected a convoluted mechanism of psychological self-deception to "unsee" one another. When I reread my 2009 review of the book, I was struck by how much it Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-36167542575389504252018-04-29T20:44:00.000+03:002018-04-29T20:44:10.827+03:00Avengers: Infinity War
#AvengersInfinityWar is the DC superhero movie of the MCU.
— Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) April 28, 2018
For the last ten years, Marvel Studios has been doing the impossible. Just look at the list of decisions they've made on the road to total dominance of the movie box office, Hollywood's action-adventure machine, and sizable chunks of the cultural conversation. Every one of them, at Abigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com18